The present invention relates to the separation of sulfated glycosaminoglycans, referred to in abbreviated form as sGAG.
The sGAG considered in the present invention are biopolymers of human or animal origin, of the polysaccharide type, among which there may be mentioned:
chondroitin 4-sulfate and 6-sulfate PA1 dermatan sulfate PA1 keratan sulfate PA1 heparin sulfate and heparins.
For more details concerning these sGAG, or mucopolysaccharides, it will be useful to refer to the following bibliographical reference:
Aspinall, G. O., Polysaccharides, Pergamon Press, Oxford (1970), the contents of which are incorporated in the present description as and when necessary.
Various technical sectors require ever greater quantities of sGAG of ever greater purity. In this respect, mention may be made of the medical field using biomaterials, in particular as replacement for human skin.
The sGAG are obtained from various animal tissues: cartilage, cornea, skin and connective tissues in general. In order to obtain or extract the sGAG from these primary materials, the latter are ground in order to obtain a ground mixture or hydrolyzate in an aqueous phase. The proteoglycans present in the ground mixture are then degraded so as to eliminate their proteic parts and to obtain a complex medium comprising GAG, and in particular sGAG. This degradation is carried out using conventional techniques, such as digestion by wide-spectrum proteases, or hydrolysis in a basic medium.
The complex medium obtained in accordance with the above contains, in addition to the sGAG, various contaminants, polymeric or otherwise, of ionic nature or otherwise. Of these contaminants, particular mention may be made of those having amino acid groups, such as various proteins, various peptides of amphoteric nature, in particular those having carboxyl groups carried by glutamic acid and aspartic acid residues; these contaminants are not generally covalently bonded to the sGAG of the complex medium.